Which Part of U.S. Mobile Market Might Google Want?

The rumors about Google working with Dish Network to build a fourth generation mobile network are not yet confirmed, and might not even happen. 

But it is a jarring notion in some quarters, simply because Google would have a motivation not shared with mostly all the other service providers. 

Google's business model is based on advertising revenue, so all its other moves in the operating system, payments, browser, device and broadband access areas essentially are intended to spur more competition and investment in those markets, in ways that increase Google's ability to sell advertising and marketing services. 

That's quite a lot of investment that has indirect benefits. And that's the crux of the Google challenge. Google is quite willing to behave in ways that essentially lower the price of a product others sell. 

Lower broadband access prices, broadband on every device and faster broadband all around are inputs to Google's business model. 

Still, some observers might look at any future Google-influenced or partly Google-owned Long Term Evolution mobile network as an almost-certain exercise in futility. 

After all, the entire U.S. cable industry, which also has a vested interest in mobility has struggled for at least a couple of decades to figure out "how to do wireless," and basically has concluded it is too late to get in.

That is not stopping would-be disruptors such as FreedomPop, and might not stop Google, Dish Network, Globalstar  or LightSquared, either. For some of those entities, the suspicion remains that the real objective is simply to enhance the value of spectrum holdings by making noises about LTE and then enticing another firm to buy the spectrum. 

FreedomPop wants to try disrupting the market, though, and that might be what Google also could find attractive about its own LTE mobile network. 

Disruption likely is on Softbank's agenda as well.  

And that might be the developing challenge. There are lots of contestants making some amount of noise about getting into the mobile business. And some of those contestants likely will try not only disruptive levels of pricing, but might also try to recraft the approach to the market.

Google has a big interest in broadband Internet access, not voice. Dish Network has a huge interest in mobile video, while mobile broadband access is just a way to do that. Neither firm seems to believe voice or text messaging is a core interest. 

And that should lead to retail packaging that simply tries to create a different value proposition, namely mobile Internet and mobile video, not "communications" in the more established way. 

And such efforts are fairly common when new contestants try to disrupt a market.